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Unidentifiable GPU death or driver issue (Solved)

Oniketsoku

Posted 15 December 2014 - 04:51 PM

Oniketsoku

Member

Member

340 posts

Hello G2G

My rig has been running pretty okay for quite some time, but in the past 4-6 weeks the situation has been slowly degrading to a grinding halt as of last night when SHTF finally. Performance started to drop in applications and my PC would crash when running demanding games so I stopped playing them. Last night, I couldn't even play League of Legends on the bare minimum settings for 5 minutes without a crash, half the times it'd recover with a message from the systray saying nVidia driver 3.35 such and such has recovered, other half I'd just get a forced restart. I tried updating the GPU driver via windows update, but there seemed to be literally zero influence or change afterwards.

This morning I cleaned my PC as quite a bit of dust had built up and thought maybe that was the culprit. Turns out I can't even boot up any more, just get a loop of restarts. First time after getting everything hooked back up I got a BSOD but I can't recreate the blue screen to record the error. I can only get things functional by running in safe mode with networking (which is where I am posting to you from). It sounds like a driver issue but a slow degredation over time suggests a hardware issue, right? I honestly don't know. I've been mostly clean on my MWB scans for over a year but I guess I couldn't totally rule out malware as a problem since I don't scan ultra deep or anything. I know the first step I have to do is isolate and identify the issue but I'm really not too sure where to start with this and there's a ton of misinformation on the net. Please help!

https://support.micr....com/kb/3024777 I know that this was a thing, but I don't have KB3004394. Just figured it was worth bringing windows updates into consideration maybe?EDIT 2: Since I can get into windows with a regular boot now, here's a list of my most recent windows updates: http://puu.sh/dww7W/0817e1d8e7.png the optional 12/15 GPU update is the one that seemed to have no effect (similar to the currently updated driver on a fresh install) last night.

http://www.pcmech.co...rd-might-dying/ Downloaded Furmark from here but I am hesitant to run it. It's also worth noting that prior to crashing, I'd 100% of the time get a short spasm of artifacting just before it would try to recover or restart.

I think that's everything. I'm considering doing the whole msconfig/disable all services thing but am not sure if it's relevant to my problem. Let me know what you think and how I should start trying to fix this. I haven't tried doing a normal boot with onboard GFX and removing the card, but I'm 99.9999% sure it would work. I also considered putting on some new thermal while cleaning but temperatures have never really been an issue. If I make any changes or try something else I'll make a note of it in the OP.

EDIT 2: Reseated the GPU, ran sfc /scannow, ran ComboFix, ran FRST, then ran DDU again in safe mode and it worked - deleted all AMD and nVidia drivers, restarted PC with internet off & installed newest driver, here was the result after the final restart and opening the client to test a game (not even in the game yet, just opened the launcher): http://puu.sh/dwv6M/bb6eb20896.png From someone ignorant like me on the outside looking in, I think it has to be a conflict with some sort of other drvier, windows update, software, or failing hardware. Maybe the card is failing to use/apply the driver properly and that type of error code is the only way it knows how to show something is wrong? IDK. I'll try disabling the services from msconfig tomorrow morning since that is more suspect now. I'll look around for some sort of video card diagnostic in the meantime

EDIT 3: Ok, I found a decent diagnostic named GPUZ. Here are the results after running stuff randomly for a few minutes: http://puu.sh/dwxxL/b0322f66d1.jpg the screen blacked out and I got the Windows Kernel Error Driver systray message after the fan speed hit 0 and the GPU load spiked to over 99%. I attached a .txt of the raw data gpuz log number one.txt76.87KB69 downloads if anyone is interested, I have found the problem in action but no idea how to interpret it yet (open the log with notepad otherwise it's ineligible). In the log you see the GPU load spike REALLY FAST over a few seconds straight to 99 then go back to normal. It'd be really easy to blame it on the PSU or temperatures getting too high but you can see that temps are stable and there are no voltage drops. I am officially stumped!

Posted 15 December 2014 - 10:55 PM

Also a look at disks, Please copy and paste, diskmgmt.msc in the Run box and include a screenshot in your next reply. When the window opens, you may have to drag the right side and bottom out, so all contents can be seen.

Oniketsoku

Posted 16 December 2014 - 01:11 AM

iammykyl

Posted 16 December 2014 - 07:54 AM

iammykyl

Tech Staff

Technician

6,763 posts

Thanks for the info.

I believe much of your slowdown, poor performance, freezing, is lack of free space on the hard drive. If a drive gets too full then you get Boot problems. A drive needs space for Temps, Cache, paging, etc. Lots of opinions on this, but I keep 10% free on a SSD and 20% on a mechanical drive. If a drive is fragmented, Data is placed, a bit hear and a bit there, all over the drive, so free space should be contagious so Data is written in blocks. As the drive fills you start to access the inner area of the platters, the slowest part.

Let's start with a cleanup to see if things improve, then we can look at other issues. The one program i do not use or recomend is CCcleaner, up to you, but it does cause lots of problems by cleaning the registry,

Boot to safe mode with Networking and follow this guide, (do not clean out service pack files, etc. or clean the WinSxS Folder, mistakes can easily be made.

iammykyl

Posted 17 December 2014 - 12:45 AM

iammykyl

Tech Staff

Technician

6,763 posts

In the log you see the GPU load spike REALLY FAST over a few seconds straight to 99 then go back to normal.

My understanding is that it is normal behaviour due to power saving, When not under load, all setting drop, when you, say, load a new level, view/screen or intense action displayed like explosions, fast action with lots of detail, all setting increase to perform the task/s

You have performed the steps I would use without a fix so see if we can get some info.

Oniketsoku

Posted 17 December 2014 - 08:48 AM

Oniketsoku

Member

Topic Starter

Member

340 posts

Running those next steps now. Just thought I'd post a follow-up. Everything seemed to be running okay for about an hour and then it started crashing again. The same problem persists but the overall quality of my machine has improved.

EDIT:

These are some pretty useful tools I didn't know about. Thanks for sharing.

Looks like the origin of this problem was all the way back in August. Was there something specific you wanted me to look up with Event Viewer though?

And here's the HWifor64 stuff

Current Minimum Maximum Average

It's not a real large amount of time to collect data so I'll post another image after it has been collecting for several hours. May be worth noting that last night it had a crash simply while watching a 2 minute trailer on Youtube last night. Granted it was 1080p and 60fps footage of some intense stuff but I don't know if there's any actual rendering involved with just watching a video... weird

Oniketsoku

Posted 21 December 2014 - 09:03 AM

Oniketsoku

Member

Topic Starter

Member

340 posts

Sorry for disappearing, have been busy with a multitude of things. Unfortunately, it definitely seems like things are getting worse. Getting a lot more crashes and blackouts when not even gaming. I've actually had two in the middle of writing this, lol. Also, got a new error last night and was unable to run the PC unless in safe mode again. I was hoping it was that windows update as well but unfortunately that was one of the first things I checked back in the OP

Which is pretty interesting and led me to finding this thread: http://www.techsuppo...sys-604177.html seems like he was having the same problem and the only thing that worked was replacing the mobo. I am thinking of purchasing one to see if it's the fix I need and if it doesn't work, just returning the board. What are your thoughts?

Anyways, I will do and upload the CPU stress test you requested in the meantime. Was there a particular way you recommend going about it before I search for one?

Oniketsoku

Posted 22 December 2014 - 06:59 PM

Oniketsoku

Member

Topic Starter

Member

340 posts

Got this when trying to install GPU_NOS while in safe mode w/nw

I decided to go with this board http://www.newegg.co...N82E16813128514
I cross-checked my hardware to make sure it was compatible and it looks ok to me. The board is AM3+ but the CPU itself is AM3, yet that doesn't seem to be an issue after some googling

It seemed like a good idea at the time because of the 30 day free trial for the newegg premier thing with free 2-3day shipping, free returns, and no restocking fee

In the meantime I'll try the gfx CUI service fix you recommended and post back after it's done, but no luck with the first one

EDIT: As of now I can't even to get it to boot so only safe mode works, but it doesn't even want to bring up safe mode as an option. I'll let it power off until tomorrow that usually fixed it before (which yells hardware problem at me personally)